First hour: Poet-journalist Jerry Mazza says "I Would Rather Write About Love": "How can life and its expression, love, hold this true blue sky and inspire us to live while others bury the truth like bodies one by one?" And in a piece published today, he dissects the three-ring circus around the Supreme Court in DC as it prepares to issue a decision on ObamaCare.

Second hour: Rolf Lindgren on Ron Paul (who just drew thousands of people to a rally at the University of Wisconsin-Madison); Jim Fetzer on the Vancouver Hearings on 9/11.

"This massacre is just one of several hundred committed by US armed forces according to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. It could ruin the Obama presidency, by putting him on trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice and arguably send him to jail for war crimes.""When the extreme measures have run their course there will be nothing to fall back on and nothing can save the president of a collapsing empire from the revolt of its citizens and soldiers."

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles.

I read Rock and Roll Jihad compulsively, cover to cover. It's an amazing story: A Pakistani teenager in New York falls in love with rock n' roll, is dragged back to Pakistan by relatives who want him to be an M.D....and the rest is history.

I'm about the last person on earth who'll ever fall for "hooray for American popular culture as it does battle with fanatical medieval Islam" stories. But that's not what this is about. Salman Ahmad is not some kind of red-white-and-blue cultural warrior doing battle with the mullahs. He's an intensely spiritual, thoughtful Muslim who has a "junoon" (creative obsession) with music, and a knack for peace-making and cultural bridge-building. The fallout from his musical obsession, as he takes enormous risks to pursue his musical muse in an ever-changing Pakistani (and American) political and cultural landscape, and manages to hang onto his values in trying circumstances, is the greatest rock and roll story I've ever read.

"And thus the stage will soon be set for America’s shift from Apathy to the eighth stage of a civilization’s collapse, Dependence on the State which will be quickly followed by Bondage to the State and Orwell’s prophetic words will finally become a reality ~ “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live ~ did live, from habit that became instinct ~ in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

First hour: Alison Weir of If Americans Knew, one of the best sources for accurate information on the Zionist occupation of Palestine.Topic include Zionist brainwashing of Christians via the Scofield Bible; Alison's take on Gilad Atzmon; and the new billboard campaign against US $ to Israel.

Second hour: Joshua Blakeney is my colleague at Veterans Today, and Press TV's new Canada correspondent! Joshua says Press TV is a more truthful news source than most of its competition. He also discusses the campaign to keep Bush and Cheney out of Canada (or better yet, arrest them for war crimes); Denis Rancourt's academic freedom struggle; the 14,000-and-counting deaths from Fukushima radiation in the US alone; whether Fukushima may have been the result of the "earthquake weapon" with which Japan was threatened by the international banking cartel; and why Israel has become an imperial hegemon since the 9/11 Zionist coup d'état.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

It has been one year since Saudi Arabian forces entered Bahrain to rescue the dictatorial Bahraini regime against a people's popular revolution for democracy.

Press TV has interviewed Dr. Kevin Barrett, author & Islamic Studies expert from Wisconsin about the relationships between the Al-Khalifa regime, Saudi Arabia and the US and how these external partners have influenced the popular revolution in Bahrain.

He also discusses the muted way which the UN as well as other human rights organizations are responding to the human rights violations being carried out by the Bahraini rulers against the people.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Do the people of Bahrain have any other option but to keep up these peaceful protests? In other words, what do they need to do, do you think, to have reforms or to have demands of theirs met?

Dr. Barrett: Well, the people of Bahrain are going to need a lot of patience because they're unfortunately not being helped out by the West and the usual suspects who run around the world trumpeting their human rights concerns.

Here in Bahrain we have a genuine non-violent democracy movement. It's not clouded by issues of civil war; outside provocateurs… It is a movement that represents clearly the majority of the Bahraini people.

In Syria by contrast, polls taken by the Qatar government have showed that more than 55 percent of the Syrian people actually support their government. It's a much more complex situation there; but in Bahrain it's a straight forward peaceful pro-democracy movement that's being brutally repressed and has been now for more than a year.

Press TV: Let's look at the international response to the situation in Bahrain. One question is, could the Bahraini regime have survived this without the support that it got from Saudi Arabia and without also the political and diplomatic support that it got from the US as well? In other words, how have these countries influenced the course of the revolution in Bahrain?

Dr. Barrett: Well, the Saudis actually invaded Bahrain and put down the popular democracy movement last year. Without that invasion things might have continued building and the regime would not have been able to survive.

And again, this is a case of just rank hypocrisy. Imagine what would happen if let's say Iran were to send its forces into Syria to protect the government. Americans and their lackeys around the world would be screaming from the rooftops.

But here, the Saudi regime, which is a totally dictatorial monarchy, invaded a neighboring country to put down these peaceful pro-democracy protests… and did so successfully.

And of course the US, which has its Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain and which uses the Saudi dynasty to maintain corporate bankster control of the world dollar and oil system, didn’t’t mind at all.

So I think it's clear that the Americans and the Saudis are behind this propping up of a regime whose days are clearly numbered.

Press TV: Let's look at how the US is leading international efforts at the UN has been reacting to these revolutions. We saw for instance in the case of Libya or now in the case of Syria when it (the US) is not in favor of the rulers, it does call for military intervention; it does call for even equipping the opposition with arms.

Or as in the case of Yemen we saw the US and Saudi Arabia teaming up and calling for a political solution and even giving immunity from prosecution to the Yemeni ruler.

What kind of a solution do you think they're looking for in the case of Bahrain? Do you think that they're going to ask the Bahraini rulers to forego some of their powers?

Dr. Barrett: It's possible that they would be pushing some kind of compromise on the Bahraini rulers. I think the US and its allies are still trying to maintain this neo-imperial control of the Middle East in order to maintain their dollar-oil hegemony over the world.

And to do that they have tried to guide these Arab revolutions toward something other than real democracy because… when you really get down to it, in the region if there were real democracy the US Empire and its Zionists accomplices would be voted right out of the region. So they can't allow the region to generally democratize.

So what they're trying to do is destabilize certain areas - Libya and Syria have been the victims of this kind of destabilization. And then to try to stabilize others that perhaps really need to be changed.

I think the Persian Gulf oil sheikhdoms are the places that really need democratization more than any other part of the Middle East because they're the oil hub that really has the power by way of this control of oil supplies by a very small population that's being propped up by the Western bankers and imperial governors.

Press TV: Looking at the situation in Bahrain we had a committee months ago investigating allegations of torture ad crimes and that committee concluded that the Bahraini regime has actually carried out torture against prisoners; we've had death sentences for opposition activists - they're still in prison.

And as our guest in London was saying none of these reforms have happened, in order, as a precondition, to initiate that dialog.

We had the king in one instance saying that the constitution recognizes no such thing as an organized opposition in Bahrain. So, will the regime ever accept political reforms?

Dr. Barrett: Well that's a very good question. I agree that stopping torture; releasing the opposition leaders who are in prison now, should be a precondition for any kind of real dialog and negotiations.

I understand there are hundreds of opposition leaders imprison and the crackdown has continued unabated. The regime troops have continued to fire vast amounts of teargas into neighborhoods; into people's homes as well as using it in a way that's clearly a breach of international law against demonstrations. There's been live fire directed against neighborhoods, not just demonstrators, but the neighborhoods that support them.

It's very much a one-sided picture of extreme state repression against a non-violent movement - Again, unlike what we saw in Libya and in Syria.

So I would agree with the other guest that we need some kind of change in government policy to basically agree that the opposition does have a place and the leaders need to be released from jail and we need to see some kind of a truce in the streets.

Press TV: We are seeing the Bahraini protesters out on the streets. At the same time they're not getting any kind of concrete international support in their revolutionary move. There has been enough evidence of human rights abuses, of torture in the case of Bahrain violations of human rights - what can human rights organizations do about this? Why have we seen a muted response from the UN on this?

Even we have the reports of poisonous tear gas being used on protesters killing protesters and this poisonous gas the report says is being supplied by the US. What can the UN do about this?

Dr. Barrett: What the UN should do about it of course is give it the attention it deserves. But it appears that many of our human rights organizations like much of the Western corporate media is functioning more and more as a tool of propaganda for Empire rather than an honest broker. And that's a shame.

The UN has had its moments of relative independence and honesty... But this is not one of them.

So let's hope that popular pressure driven by the democratization of the media environment, of which Press TV is a big part, will lead to more and more people around the world seeing that in this case Bahrain is clearly a peaceful democracy movement being brutally repressed.

We need to put more attention on this; we need to get international investigations; we need to direct human rights organizations to look at this, not to be obsessed with what the corporate media masters here in the West are telling them to look at - which right now of course is Syria. We need to have some popular pressure on these organizations and maybe the UN will start doing its job in Bahrain.

First hour: Join the Global March to Jerusalem! Sarah Marusek is a doctoral candidate at Syracuse U., currently doing research and working on the Global March to Jerusalem in Beirut. She's been centrally involved in organizing, planning, and publicizing the march - including putting together "Jerusalem for Us All," a wonderful new compilation of MP3 tracks donated by artists from all over to help with fundraising for the march.

Dr. Paul Larudee is a longtime leader of the Palestinian-solidarity movement in the US - he's played major roles in ISM, the Free Gaza Movement, later the Free Palestine Movement, and the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and over the last year he's been active in the international planning for the GMJ.

Second hour: "The Pentagon’s 2010 base Structure Report lists 4,999 sites in the U.S., its territories and around the world. The Military-Industrial complex is long on its way to surpassing the British, Roman and Empires in number and cost. That sucking sound you hear in the background is our tax dollars rushing out of the U.S. economy when they should be funding everything from entitlements and healthcare to tax-cuts and job-building, which leaves both parties at odds and fighting each other. Then, too, the money for many wars and collateral expenses keep the National Deficit rising while draining the consumer economy. The simple fact is we can’t afford an empire." -Jerry Mazza See his brand-new article (published this morning): U.S. bases loaded for empire

First hour: Lawrence Davidson, Professor of History, West Chester University. Dr. Davidson specializes in US-Middle East relations, and also teaches history of science and modern European intellectual history. Hailing from a secular Jewish background, he is one of the few American professors courageous enough to blame the problem in Occupied Palestine on the exclusionary nature of the Zionist project itself. (Or at least to say so in public!) He is the author of Islamic Fundamentalism, America's Palestine, and Foreign Policy, Inc., and the co-author of A Concise History of the Middle East. His brand-new Cultural Genocide promises to be the most controversial yet, comparing as it does the respective attempts to annihilate the cultures of Eastern European Jews, Tibetan Buddhists, and Palestinians.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Guest, Israel Shamir, reporting live from Moscow! He says the attempted anti-Putin "color revolution" has failed: "The anticipated apocalypse did not come to pass. The presidential election in Russia ran its course, Putin was duly elected, and to the great astonishment of the opposition, multimillion crowds demanding the blood of the tyrant did not materialize." Putin's triumph is good news for those resisting the spread of the New World Order bankster empire.

First hour: Argentine anti-globalization activist Adrian Salbuchi, who just published an article on psychological warfare; last week's “Global Finance: The Shylock Model” elaborates on economic hit man John Perkins' explanation of how the New World Order banksters are trying to create the first empire in history that (a) encompasses the entire world, and (b) was created primarily by usury - miring the world in unpayable debt, and then demanding total control.Second hour: Sami Jadallah of 1not2.org, advocating the one-state solution for Israel-Palestine. In today's Israel, Jews are the master race, and all others are mere "goyim" - inferior beings. The majority of the rightful citizens of today's "Israel" have been ethnically-cleansed, and millions languish in concentration camps purely because they are NOT Jewish!

Why shouldn't Israel-Palestine be a democratic state in which all people are constitutionally equal, regardless of religion or ethnicity?

(Note: Darren Drda brilliantly stood in for Jonathan Jan. 30th...Darren is the author of the Evolver Editions/NAB book, "The Four Global Truths: Awakening to the Peril and Promise of Our Times." Listen to Darren here.)

"A modern Odyssey of awakening, Jonathan Talat Phillips's journey into Gnosticism deeply resonates with the eccentric moment. The Electric Jesus, a spiritual autobiography, reveals a life lived in the light of transformation, searching for the mystic core of a planetary civilization.” —Alex Grey, co-founder of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, author of The Mission of Art

"A fresh, vigorous, and often startling account of a man's introduction to higher planes of reality. If you've ever wondered what the new consciousness movement is about, read this book and find out." —Richard Smoley, author of Inner Christianity and The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe

1st hour: Guest, Rev. Ted Pike of TruthTellers.org. I've debated Ted Pike a couple of times - I disagree with his low opinion of the religion of Judaism, and have tried to explain to him that the Talmud is just a bunch of rabbis (some nasty, some saints) arguing with each other, so he shouldn't pick quotes out of context from it to disparage the religion as a whole. But one thing I do agree with him about is that the domination of the US media by Jewish Zionists is a national disaster. If the Zionists get their war-on-Iran-for-Israel, it may even become a terminal disaster. It is incumbent upon every American to learn who owns and operates the monopoly corporate media, and to demand that that media become more representative of the general population. For example, since Muslims (who are mostly anti-Zionist) and Jews (who are mostly pro-Zionist) make up about the same proportion of the US population (roughly 2% each) they should be roughly equally represented in all of the key positions in our media. Read this article by Rev. Pike and tell me that that's the case!!

Truth is truth, people. As W.C. Fields put it, "It's time to take the bull by the tail and look the facts in the face."

2nd hour: Gordon Duff, editor of Veterans Today, returns with his grab-back of tricks, featuring his usual merriment and glee. Check out his take on the current Washington, DC all-pro wrestling match, Nuttyahoo vs. Obama-Man.

We're back! A huge thank you to the generous donors who pitched in to keep me and my family going. We couldn't do it without you! (If you'd like to help, just donate or subscribe at TruthJihad.com.)

First hour: Karen Tostado, founder of United We Strike, "stopping the dominate criminal minority by waking up my brothers and sisters to their personal power through peaceful non-compliance and accountability. We all share this planet, and it is time to stop allowing such inequality. There is more than enough to go around. The privately owned federal reserve cartel needs to be closed, and corporations must clean up their 'externalities' and not be classified as persons. Money no longer spent on war, but on Peace & Prosperity for All. POWER TO THE PEOPLE THROUGH PEACEFUL UNITY!"